Man on the Wire
by pinkfloyd1770
Summary: Kyle is held together by two things: the notion that he can move forward, step by step, addressing each problem as it arises, and Stan's manly eyebrows. StanxKyle. Post college.


_All right. I'm supposed to be working on other stories, and I am. However, I was sitting at an airport, waiting for a connecting flight, and I had an idea for a story involving a statue of some kind, and this was the result. Frankly, I think the symbolism is heavy handed and over wrought, and I'm not really satisfied with the ending, but it's the best I could come up with. I'm classifying this as part humor as well, but again, I don't really know how funny I actually managed to make any part of the story. If you're interested and decide to read, feedback on these and other issues would of course be appreciated. And the alliteration. I don't even know...  
_

* * *

Wendy asked Stan, Stan asked Kyle, and then, before Kyle knew what was happening, he was up at 6 am on a Saturday, helping to haul a four foot, two hundred pound pile of rocks out the door of a run down art gallery in downtown Evanston. Art gallery. For once, Kyle agrees with Cartman: the only thing keeping the building and its equally dilapidated owner out of the shit hole are gullible, new aged hippies like Wendy, who think a pile of rocks held together by thin, rusting wire qualifies as art.

Kyle's breath hisses from between clenched teeth as he rams his knee against the edge of the door as he and Stan tried to turn so the piece would fit out the door.

"Ok, ok. Stop, stop." He starts to lower the rocks, but Stan doesn't move with him

"Kyle, we're almost to the car, dude. Let's just get this over with."

Kyle rolls his eyes and shakes his head. He'd love nothing better than to be over with it. Over with this...favor to Stan's ex of over thirteen years, over with the sting of rough rock rubbing away at the skin of his palms. Over with damn, disingenuous depositions.

"The door." He gestures with his head.

Stan frowns but doesn't follow the motion.

"Oh my god Stan. The goddamn car door. It's closed." He hopes the store owner heard him; he hopes the auto mechanics next door heard him.

"Oh." Stan's face slides into shock, like he'd just been proposed to, right there on the street.

Before Kyle can pursue that thought, Stan rapidly lowers his half of their burden, nearly crushing Kyle's fingers in the process.

"Christ, Stan! A little warning next time?"

Stan at least looks guilty. He frowns and his eyebrows scrunch up together, and Kyle smiles a bit. In the morning light, they look glossy, as though sculpted out of impossibly fine obsidian shards. He'd forgotten how much he likes Stan's black, bushy eyebrows.

The click of the car door stops his thoughts from continuing. _Might be for the best, _Kyle mused. Terrible, dirty thoughts about Stan's eyebrows.

"All right. Ready?" Stan looks entirely too eager to be doing this.

"Stan, before we keeping going, I want you to tell me what the hell this thing is supposed to be." Kyle keeps his eyes fixed on the stones, not wanting to be distracted by Stan's scrunching supercillia.

"It's a person. Like, you can see the shape of the head and the torso and the legs." He remains expectantly silent, while Kyle tries to ignore the burning section of effaced skin on his hand.

"I don't see it. It's a pile of rocks."_ And a piece of shit. _

Stan laughs "No, here dude." He takes Kyle's hand and places it against the rocks, where the wire mesh tightened and crushed them together; Kyle assumes whoever cobbled it together just ran out of money and couldn't afford enough wire to securely fasten all the stones in a similar fashion.

"It's the neck; the stones have even been polished." He moves Kyle's hand up. The rock becames rough again, the mesh looser and thinner, the mass jutting forward sharply. Kyle thinks of Cartman, imposing his opinion and corpulence bluntly and without a second thought.

"And there's the chin...the face..." Stan speaks lowly, almost to himself. His grip is light and loose, his hand warm and heavy. "And, the top of the head." Stan's hand stills; he places it over Kyle's. Their fingers are the same length, but Stan's are broader, fuller, radiating out from his palm like the digits of a bronze statue, bronze _Because marble is too brittle, too porous. _

_He's all right this morning. _Kyle realizes, and smiles along with him. Stan had stayed up for almost all of last night; he was running on coffee and the promise of a fresh, soft bed to fall into once the caffeine wore off. Kyle would bound after him into a Saturday afternoon of linen wrapped indolence, after they'd shoved the statue into some corner of their apartment and forgotten it; then it would be Wendy's problem, hers and whatever poor sap she was dating, probably some other hippie she'd met in California. Christ, he needed to get this over with.

"OK." He nods. "I can see it now. Let's get this thing into the car."

Stan lifts his hand, and in moments Kyle's is being scraped away again. They've gone as far as the curb when Stan's eyes twitch, his lips tighten, and his nostrils flare. Kyle starts to form a question when Stan sneezes and his grip slips and the edge of the wire bound stone pile crashes onto Kyle's big toe.

* * *

Stan's an ass to the doctor; Kyle knows it, the nurse knows it, and with how loudly he was speaking when they first entered the office, everyone in the waiting room knows it. First he complained about the wait, then insinuated that the examining room wasn't clean, evidenced by the hairs he'd found on the table; Kyle had to point out that those were his hairs, that they probably came from his coat, or, God forbid, his head.

"Stan, it's all right. It's just the examining room. No surgery, no knives." Then he adds, "I'm fine. No big deal. It doesn't even hurt." Which is true; the doctor had given him a local anesthetic as soon as he'd taken his sock off.

Stan is pacing in tight circles as Kyle speaks, gnawing on the end of his thumb; the doctor is casting increasingly frequent glances at him, his lips growing tighter.

"Fuck, Kyle. I'm so sorry." His voice is so constricted, it sounds like he's the one who just had two hundred pounds of stone dropped on his toe.

As Stan curves into his path of closest approach to the table, Kyle grabs his hand, muttering that he needs to be close to him right now.

Stan immediately kneels next to him, anxiety evaporating from his face.

"Of course, Ky. Sorry." Kyle strokes Stan's forefinger with his thumb, tires to imagine how rough the tip of Stan's must be now.

The doctor's lips relax, and he gives Kyle a brief look of gratitude. Stan's other hand begins bouncing and shaking against his thigh.

Kyle looks away, towards his toe; beneath his nail, it's like a blot of red and black and blue ink floating together, a child's idea of artistic expression. Curt violence. He supposes it is childish, primitive, a rock smashing flesh and bone. It occurs to him that his toe might be broken.

As if sensing his train of thought, the doctor comments, "Well, Mr. Broflovski, it doesn't look like there's much more than bruising, but we're going to have to do an x-ray just to be sure.

Kyle nods. "OK." He sits up, slowly. Stan's free hand stops its nervous ministrations and finds the small of his back, compensating for what he must think to be Kyle's drug induced lack of coordination.

The doctor is already at the door, instructing a nurse to bring a wheel chair; Stan for once looks mollified.

The nurse, a heavy set woman with brown curls and a friendly face, enters moments later. The wheel chair is sturdy, silver, and new, moving soundlessly over the polished white floor. Kyle moves to stand, his good foot on the ground, but before he can push himself off the table, Stan has one arm around his shoulder, the other under his legs, and he's lifting him with seeming ease, placing him into the wheelchair with almost affected delicacy.

"Thanks," Kyle deadpans, looking at him as though to say "yes, Stan thank you for demonstrating that you still have your football body." But Stan is having none of his patronizing expressions; he returns the look, stoic, unapologetic.

"That's quite the knight in shinning armor you've got there." The nurse jokes, her tone just as welcoming and warm as her face.

Kyle is reminded of his mother, and feels his lips quirk up. Stan must be too, because he turns his head to the side, rubbing the back of his neck; his other hand is already moving, fingers drumming on his pants.

Kyle clears his throat, drawing attention. "Would it be all right if Stan wheeled me into the x-ray room?" He affects worry, smiling at Stan as he does so, who returns the gesture and bounds over before a confirmation is even given.

_Even if they say no, at this point someone would have to sedate and drag him out. _Kyle admits the knowledge comforts him.

The trek to the x-ray room is short, but Kyle can't help but feel as though they've set out on a ponderous journey as he looks straight ahead at the line of florescent lights on the ceiling.

When he enters the room. Kyle immediately focuses on the x-ray gun. Like the rest of the hospital, it's white, cool sterile. Sure. He's in the hands of proper medical science now, EM waves which can pierce through cloth and flesh and blood and see the truth of what's wrong with him where the human eye can't. He cranes his neck and sees that Stan is staring at the machine like he's in a sci-fi film, and at any moment the whole apparatus will spring to life and attack them all.

"All right Mr..." The doctor is suddenly at a loss, ignorant of Stan's name.

"Marsh." Stan says it like an insult directed at the man, and Kyle wishes he could grab his hand again.

"Yes, Mr. Marsh. If you could wheel Mr. Broflovski over there, in front of the white x-ray cassette..."

Stan obliges, and then, at Kyle's assurance that no, he isn't going to be assaulted by the doctor and the radiographer, steps away and lets Kyle follow their instructions unhindered.

He places his good foot forward first, his other hovering a few inches above the floor, like he's the most unwieldy bird in existence.

"Now, if you'll just place your left foot on the cassette. Yes, that's right. Keep your weight on your other foot. Can you hold like that for a few minutes?"

"Yeah." Kyle nods. "I used to do yoga a while back. To relax." Kyle doesn't mention that 'a while back' was over a decade ago, when Stan had begged him to come along for a session that Wendy had roped him into.

"All right. Now we'll just put this on." The doctor offers his arm, and Kyle accepts it as the radiographer places a belt of lead shields around his waist, three pads shaped like theater masks, one extending past his groin, the other two symmetric around the first. He holds onto the doctor's arm for a minute, adjusting his stance for the added weight.

"You're all right with the weight?" The doctor looks at him closely, and Kyle nods in response.

"Good, then we'll start. Mr. Marsh, if you'll follow me." Kyle hears only one set of footsteps.

"Kyle..."

Kyle speaks softly. "Stan, come on. It's just an x-ray. We've been through way worse." He turns and gives him as encouraging an expression as he can muster, and that does the trick, giving him the impetus to leave the room worry free.

Kyle manages to hold the position well enough to complete the procedure; towards the end, he starts thinking of himself as a abstract piece in an obscure gallery. _Man with injured foot; at least it'd look better than the pile of crap that fell on me. Or maybe it was just supposed to represent a dismembered man. _

"All right, Mr. Broflovski. We've finished." The door opens on the tail of those words; the radiographer removes the gonadal shield. Kyle is again offered an arm, accepts it, and neatly pivots himself about the other body. Stan isn't standing behind the wheelchair; it's the same nurse that reminds Kyle of his mother. Kyle can feel a kind of vacuum forming in him, the edges expanding, the front containing an energy of foreboding.

He sighs, uselessly. "Oh Stan."

* * *

4:17. The light, reduced to what looks like a razor's edge in thickness, is still shinning into the room from under the door. It washes out against the floorboards and onto the walls, splattering them with thin, long shadows.

Kyle sits up and stares at the door. Footsteps. Silence. A soft sound, something like scraping. Silence. He turns back. 4:19. He's out of bed and dragging himself to the door, by the sound his foot is making. He opens the door and Stan is crouching over a long sheet of paper, brush in hand, what Stan calls the ink block over to the side, gleaming in the bright lights of the room

Stan doesn't notice Kyle. He's wearing the same clothing he had on in the morning; jeans and a blue button down shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal his forearms, because if Kyle can admire any feature of a fully clothed Stan besides his eyebrows, it's his forearms.

"Stan," Kyle says softly, because he can't bear to speak any louder right now.

That's all it takes to get his attention; Stan looks up and smiles; the light accents the fatigue of his face.

"Kyle." His voice is full of relief and warmth and expectation. Kyle feels his throat tighten.

And he's talking. He's waving his hands, brush still aloft. Ink blots the floor where he gestures. Kyle makes a note to clean it later, after he's gotten Stan to bed.

Kyle's being taken by the hand. Stan has three other scrolls of paper laid out, the last one clean, white. Stan moves his hand over the air above each paper, going into what might as well be Greek, except that would have been easier for Kyle to piece together than the curves and swirls and blotches he's seeing.

"It's deliberate," Stan says. "See, dude, it's the...form, it's the form, with the characters, that makes it art. I mean, if you were to write sloppy English, that's all it would be, just look at my writing, and you'll get the idea." He laughs, and Kyle can only nod shallowly and tighten his grip on Stan's hand, while the explanation continues.

"Uhh..." And they're moving to the next paper. "This one's just drying, but it's got..." He gestured with his hand in large, wide circles. "It's got more style." He sounds dissatisfied, but keeps on. Kyle is looking at the table. There's a pile of books crowding it, mostly Stan's folio sized Japanese books that have golden titles in kanji and outrageous prices on Amazon.

Now they're at the third. Kyle hears the phrase "death verse" and his head and attention snap to Stan, but he's moved on with elaboration.

"...it's connected to Buddhist tradition, and there's a shit ton of story behind every one of them. It's not really about death as final, end point; it's the touch, it's the feel, it's the example, it's like if you were to put a video camera into someone's room and let them speak their last words, just a handful of their last, most important words."

"That's...that's pretty morbid, Stan."

Stan shakes his head rapidly. "Not at all. Here."

They arrive at the blank paper, and Kyle suddenly gropes at an idea.

"Stan. After this, could you come to bed?"

"Yeah, yeah of course." He's getting the ink stone.

"No. Stan. I'm serious. After this. Bed." He sounds like a moron. Monosyllabic.

The elation is rapidly evaporating from Stan's face. He's lowered his hands. "Kyle. What's going on?"

Kyle looks at the paper. "Nothing. Let's just. Show me what you wanted to show me."

Stan moves closer; his hair is greasy, unwashed, but it looks sleek. It's still tinged with the fresh smell of Stan's shampoo.

"Kyle. What do you think this is?"

"It's...calligraphy. It's...

"No. Not that. What do you think the motivation behind my doing this is?"

Kyle doesn't look him in the face.

Stan inhales loudly. "OK." He kneels down and starts to roll the paper.

"What are you doing?" Kyles voice is rough, as though from disuse.

"Cleaning up. Go to bed. I'll be there in ten." He's moved onto the others.

"Stan, you don't have to."

"I do. Go to bed. I'm done here." He's turned his back, collecting his other materials.

Kyle notices, for the first time, that the painkillers have started to wear off.

* * *

Monday, and Kyle's on the way to work. He hits the brake abruptly; first he swears at the pain in his foot, then at the sound of two hundred pounds of pointy rocks ramming the back of the passenger seat. Oh, Wendy is going to suffer for this. He grips the wheel and narrows his eyes. Stan said they should keep the rock shit pile in the car. He said Kyle shouldn't exert himself right now, even just to carry it to the elevator and then down the hall. And Kyle hadn't been able to muster any reserves of motivation, or even indifference, to make Stan listen to him.

A horn blares behind him. His hand claws at the window control; he's riding on a surge of adrenaline, shoving his head out the window like the car is burning.

"Go around, fucktard!"

He's yelling at an old man, whose body stiffens and jolts with the shock of the reprimand. But Kyle isn't interested in niceties or the cardiac health of the elderly. He unbuckles himself and flips around, kneeling on the seat, his good foot pressing against the door. He pushes against the top quarter of the rock pile, relying on torque to do most of the work for him; there's a shallow puncture in the leather, and Kyle is further incensed. Wendy will literally pay for this. Cartman's voice is sounding in his head, deriding his train of thought as symptomatic of "filthy Jew genes." Of course. Kyle grits his teach and pushes the whole thing back onto the seat. They were smart enough to put several towels on and up the seat as a precaution before they'd even loaded the thing into the car.

Now he's moving forward again, not bothering with his belt. The office is only five blocks away. Stan even raised concerns about him driving, but Kyle wasn't having any of it. They worked on opposite sides of the city, Stan's office near the river. He liked to walk to work anyway, liked the way Chicago had been designed with 'natural aesthetics' in mind. Kyle even said he'd be late this morning, operating under a thin pretext of anxiety induced insomnia, which Stan readily accepted. Kyle hadn't been able to look him in the face for long; he hated lying to Stan, and worse, he hadn't felt nervous about anything since passing the state bar, what...five years ago? It was as though after years of venting, hand curling and nail drumming, sweating and insomnia, he'd exhausted himself, regurgitating all the noxious anxiety of his youth in one claustrophobic, three year space of neurosis. Now, taut but supple, strained but alert, he could carve a path for himself, like a string slicing through a block of clay, slow but steady.

He parks the car more delicately than usual, making sure both sides are parallel to the yellow line. It's not his fault if everyone else parks like a jackass. Inside the office, he's greeted by what he likes to call pandemonium, but is really just the accumulated residue of urgency, left over from every most important case the firm had ever dealt with. Now on his first most important case, Kyle finds himself at a loss on how to relate to his colleague's attitudes and trepidations. They assume he has perfectly controlled stoicism, and Kyle is fine with that.

Half way through his day, Kyle is sitting in his office staring at the sections of the patent document he's high-lighted. Sometimes he doesn't know who has the more boring job: the guy who writes the patents, or him, the poor sap who has to spend hours at a time reading them. As he considers turning the page, someone walks in without knocking. His rebuke dies on his lips, morphing mid breath into something more powerful and wholly emotional.

"What the hell do you want?"

"Now, now. Kyle. What kind of question is that for someone who's just brought you a gift?" Cartman is holding a bottle of champagne by the neck, handling it with exaggerated delicacy.

"It's the only question I'll ever have whenever you show up anywhere near me unannounced." He looks down at his paper again, his lips thinning when Cartman sets the bottle down on his desk, all but dropping it against the wood. Kyle sighs and looks up.

Cartman pauses, as though for dramatic effect. He's pursing his lips; in his black suit, red tie and pale blue shirt, he looks on the edge of making an imperative decision.

Kyle snorts. _Probably trying to decide what to shovel into his mouth for lunch. _Cartman _had_ lost weight in recent years, growing leaner, harder, but he retained enough flesh around his cheeks and neck that Kyle still felt justified in using the tried and true childhood epithets of 'fatass' and 'wide load'.

"All right, Cartman. I'll bite. What's with the champagne? Finally decided all those years of ripping on me were just compensation for not being able to ride me?"

Cartman looks disgusted. "Yeah right, Kyle. If I were gay, I wouldn't go anywhere near your ginger Jew ass. I'd probably get day walker STDs." He recovers from his bout of revulsion, and leans forward, one hand on the edge of Kyle's desk, the other held in front of him like a prop.

"Three words, Jew: All Season Traction."

Kyle frowns as though in concentration. He knows where Cartman is going; one of his first cases as an associate, simple, straightforward. Two rival auto companies, both trying one up the other with increasingly elaborate complications of anti-lock brakes, tire speed monitors, and various bells to keep old geezers awake and away from the shoulder, and other cars. Kyle had found and argued successfully that, no, their client's technology didn't infringe upon an existing invention, as it was predicated upon piezoelectric pressure sensors, something the opposition's client hadn't even mentioned implementing in their patent claim.

"Isn't this the same case that you said had been deadlocked for over a year?" He keeps his face relaxed. Unsafe implementation. High probability of destabilization in rough weather conditions. Inaccurate readings. Kyle knows the list of complaints filed by the DOT.

Cartman chortles. "Oh it still is, it still is." He leans in closer, smiling. "But I have to thank you personally, Kyle. Know what noon today marks?"

Kyle shrugs, unamused. "Your 1000th box of doughnuts eaten?"

Cartman doesn't even register the statement. He whispers, "Five thousand billable hours." He closes his eyes and inhales, as though taking in the scent so sweet ambrosia. The tip of his tongue emerges from between his lips, and Kyle, absurdly, finds the gesture repulsive. He moves from Kyle's personal space.

"It's like, I called these people up and said 'ey, start putting money into my account.'" He laughs, self-congratulatory. "All neat. All clean and quick and legal. And you know what? It's just a drop in the bucket. Just a few million bucks for them, instead of a few billion, if this thing ever went class action and they lost." He rests his hand on the bottle neck. "And so, this is for you, Kyle, without whom that auto company wouldn't have implemented that safety technology, fucked it up, and gotten themselves into a five thousand hour mess with the DOT."

Kyle feels something in his chest again; nothing like yesterday, when Stan wasn't in the x-ray room, when they had to sit in the car in the parking lot for half an hour, so Kyle could try to rekindle the sense of carefree joy Stan had shown in the morning. But he lacked the tools, or didn't know how to use them, and could only goad him as far as stoic endurance.

Now, he wants to grab the envelope opener sitting near the corner of the desk and brandish it like a weapon.

"And are they still on the clock? Or does no one care that you came clear across town just to gloat to someone who isn't even connected to your current case?"

Cartman waves his hand. "It doesn't even matter at this point, Kyle. One hour. A hundred. They're in this for the long run. And they wanna win. And I'll make sure they do, but not before I've had my fill."

Kyle laughs and shakes his head. It's like self-flagellation. "You're exactly the same, then, huh? Full of shit and proud of it. Can't say I'm surprised."

"Oh Kyle. Nothing you can say will piss me off right now. Just don't pretend that you're any better than I am. We're both in the same boat; you just don't want to admit you have as much to gain from it as I do."

Kyle exhales, slowly. There's no point in goading Cartman on. He lived off other people's indignation, like a fat, racist parasite.

"OK, Cartman, think that if you want to. You're doing a good job, defending your client, even if you are milking them for all they're worth." It's the truth. Cartman is good, no, a fantastic attorney. "And." His mouth twists. "Thanks for the champagne."

Cartman's eyes narrow. His cool facade of contentment breaks, and his expression reverts to the one Kyle knew so well in their school days, poised and calculating.

"Don't give me that passive, hippie bullshit, Kyle. It's not you. Save it for your crazy boyfriend."

In a flash, Kyle's hand is around the cool handle of the envelope opener. An instant later he's walking around the the desk, his face curiously calm as he holds the point of the opener aimed up towards Cartman's throat. The look on Cartman's face turns from contempt to concern as soon as Kyle gets within a foot of him.

"Cartman. Get out. Now." His voice, also calm, surprises him, but he doesn't let the emotion rise to his face.

Cartman frowns. "Kyle, what the hell..."

"Out. Now." He grinds out the last words like they're physically painful to speak, advancing as he does so.

Cartman backs away, eyes wide and hands raised in a failed attempt at placation. Kyle's gaze never leaves his face until Cartman steps out the hall, closing the door behind him.

Kyle felt exhausted when he heard the latch click. His shoulders slumped, he turned back to his desk, tossing the opener onto it without care for the surface.

He sighs. "Fucking fatass."

* * *

"Kenny. Kenny, are you there? OK. OK. Listen, just...just listen. No, this isn't...goddammit, will you listen? This isn't me going batshit This isn't me having an episode. This is me needing someone to talk to. Kyle? Of course. Yes, of co- of _course _I talk to Kyle. But Kyle isn't available right now, so I'm talking to you, is that all right, or do I need Kyle's permission to do that? Good. All right, so I'm at work today, and I'm sitting at my desk, writing this article about the anniversary of Hiroshima. Yeah, that's right, I do moon speak. So I'm sitting at my desk, writing this article, and I've been researching this thing for weeks, I called people, I set up interviews, I transcribed Japanese interviews, I read novels and newspapers, I even flew over there, for god's sake. The whole damn nine yards. Yes, damn it, Kenny, this is going somewhere, OK, just trust me on this. Then, one of my co-workers walks up to me, and asks me how things are going, and we shoot the shit and he asks me if I'm including anything about Oppenheimer in my article, and I just stare at him like he's started speaking Greek, and he goes on, and he says 'Well, you know you should because without him and the Manhattan project we never would have had the bomb, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki never would have been bombed, blah blah blah', and then he leaves. And...I'm sitting there, and I start thinking and I remember what Oppenheimer said, in the 60s, after the whole shit show was really starting, and he had an interview..._Yes, _Kenny. Wait, for god's sake. Please. OK. Anyway, during his interview, Oppenheimer talks about how everyone felt after they'd tested the first bomb in Los Alamos, and this quote, god this quote, he just sums it up quoting from a Hindu epic, 'I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.' I mean, Christ I-What do you mean you don't get it? What's not to get? They'd just made something that could incinerate New York City in the blink of an eye. OK, fine you don't...fine. My point, is that, I realized that what I was doing was completely useless. I wasn't making anything. There wasn't...there wasn't a single new idea in anything I'd written, it was just a damn rehash of what people have been writing and thinking for the last six decades, and that I, I had just spent ten years of my life preparing to dig up corpses and fondle them, I...No, Kenny. Do not hang up on me. Do not hang up. Do not call Kyle. Nothing I've ever written has ever influenced anyone or anything, or changed the course of thought or policy in any way. I'm taking dried shit and trying to smear it on the walls and I'm calling it art. That's all I'm...All right. Fine. Good. Go. Go to her. Fine. Bye."

"Kyle? I heard the door, dude, you don't have to pretend. When did Kenny turn into a fucking yeast infected vagina?"

* * *

Kyle becomes desperate. He debates. He ponders. He hesitates. He acquiesces. He calls Cartman. Cartman arrives on time, in a new car. He's wearing a suit. On a Sunday. Kyle thinks, sometimes, that he's the one who should be seeing a psychiatrist.

"Sup, Jew?" Cartman leans against the car, arms crossed, eying him wearily.

_Probably waiting for me rush him with a dessert fork. _Kyle almost rolls his eyes, but he feels bad, really. He stops. Yes. He feels bad.

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened Monday."

Cartman's face is blank. "Oh, Monday? Let's see..Monday, Monday, what did Kyle try to do to me on Monday?"

Kyle sighs. This is the price he has to pay for giving a shit. And needing a favor.

"For threatening you with a letter opener, all right. I'm sorry. I was..." Fuck, he wasn't going to go into all the details. Cartman knew, anyway, he always knew. Kyle frowns. Maybe he shouldn't be feeling so sorry.

Cartman pushes himself off the car and approaches Kyle, one hand rubbing his chin. He nods.

"Yes, yes. You know, Kyle, I think you might need some help. Anger management classes. I know a few people. Some clients of mine have terrible, terrible, problems with anger."

Kyle closes his eyes and shakes his head. "Says the guy who almost threw Butters off of a balcony because he said he'd always voted Democrat."

There's a glint in Cartman's eyes, as though he's being pulled off to some far flung plateau in the plane of his mind. He smiles, then his expression becomes serious.

"I don't get mad, Kyle. I just get even."

"Yeah, because that was really...Look, never mind. I need your help getting this piece of shit out of my car."

Cartman walks over to the car and looks in the window, taking in the offending object.

"Why the hell did you buy this piece of crap?"

"I didn't. Wendy did, and she's out of town unexpectedly, and long story short, she wanted a favor."

Cartman snorts. "And you did it for her?"

"Because Stan asked." Cartman knows this. He knows it, and he's still having it spelled out for him.

"Ah. I should have known." Cartman straightens. "So why do you need me, Kyle? Why not just ask Stan? Or is he having another one of his bitch fits?"

Kyle wishes he had a sharp object in his hand. Or a rock. Then he remembers he's supposed to feel sorry.

"Cartman, this is why I wanted to stab you in the throat with a letter opener."

"What, because I made an observation? It's not like I'm insulting Stan's honor, or saying anything that isn't true." He pauses. "Or is it because last time I said the C-word?"

Kyle just looks at him.

Cartman sighs in exasperation. "Christ, you need help, Kyle."

"I don't need help, Cartman. I just need you to understand that Stan isn't..." He breaks off.

"Crazy, Kyle? OK, maybe he's not psycho crazy, but he's not all there. Remember when he, uh, let's see, was walking, and stopped in the middle of the street, and just sort of stared ahead while about, what did Kenny say? Four lanes of traffic started moving towards them? Remember that story?"

Kyle is suddenly struck by the fact that Cartman has moved very close to him, and he can feel the heat of his body and breath against him; he smells like over priced aftershave and spear mint gum. Kyle can deal with that. He swallows.

"He wasn't trying to kill himself."

Cartman shakes his head. "I didn't say he was. But he sure as hell didn't seem to know or care what would happen once those cars reached him."

And Kenny calling him, screaming into the phone, while Kyle had tried to explain that no, no, Stan wasn't trying to kill himself. It had been right after his graduation from Columbia, and the ceremony, the feeling of it had been...anticlimactic to Stan. Boring. Shitty, he'd said, regressing. Kyle's voice had been so calm, so certain, that Kenny accused both of them of being crazy. Maybe Kyle was, but not Stan.

Cartman has gone from him, taking his heat and scent with him. He's standing outside the car door.

"All right. Let's get this shit show over with."

Cartman could probably have managed to haul the thing in by himself, if he had more stamina. As it stands, he manages to edge the pile out the point where Kyle can shoulder some of the burden as well. They both shuffle along, Kyle having propped open the front door with a stop. The lobby is empty and quiet; Kyle hears the dull clack of stone against tile and looks down to see one of the base rocks resting on the floor, a few feet away.

"Leave it," Kyle says without even waiting to see what Cartman will do.

Cartman scoffs. "I sure as hell hadn't planned on setting this down."

Kyle is straining by the time they reach the elevator, taking short, rough breaths, his arms trembling. Cartman's breaths are deeper, but sound labored, like he's sucking air through a pipe. Cartman pushes the UP button with his elbow and they wait, their faces strained; it looks like they're glaring at each other across the rocks.

The ding of the elevator is like an adrenaline shot, and they both move as quickly as their burden will allow. The elevator is air conditioned, the air starkly cool against Kyle's sweaty skin. He bits down on his lower lip. His arms are starting to quake.

"Cartman." He doesn't know what he's trying to convey.

"Jew." It's curt, but the strain is undeniable.

They keep their pose. A few seconds later, the doors open, and mercifully, the apartment is two doors down and Kyle moves, dragging his foot along the floor at too low an angle, so his ankle starts to hurt. Cartman is heaving and straining, like he's having a spastic respiratory attack.

The apartment is unlocked, door slightly ajar. Cartman takes the lead and shoulders it open the rest of the way.

"OK," he says, gruffly. "There. Right there." He gestures with his head towards the carpet he placed near the door, off to the side.

They move over the rug, so the rock pile will be in the middle, and without announcement, they start to simultaneously lower the pile. Kyle moves his injured foot out of the way, placing most of his weight on the left.

The pile is almost to the floor, when Cartman suddenly relinquishes his hold, and the weight come crashing down, grazing Kyle's good foot and almost crushing his fingertips.

"Ow, fuck! Cartman you fat sack of shit, what the hell?"

And Cartman is just looking at him, inhaling lighting, exhaling sharply, his forehead dabbled with sweat, his brow lightly furrowed, hands open and at his sides, like he's just emerged victorious from a fight. He suddenly smiles, and it's almost childlike in its triumph. His voice is quiet.

"And that, Kyle, is how you get even."

* * *

"Stan..." He's still speaking steadily, lowly.

"No. No. Not this time. I'm sorry Kyle. I can't. Please" He means every word.

Kyle's voice can't crack. He can't cry. It's not a fair weapon. It's a massacre, if he does it. He swallows several times, pretends he's tired so he can massage his eyes and obscure the tears. He's ready now. Stan is staring at him and he must know. The sun is on both their faces.

"Stan, if it's real, the pill won't kill it."

Kyle doesn't know what happens to Stan's face. He only knows it changes; something about his eyes, and now Kyle swears he's never seen them before. The pill leaves Kyle's hand and now it's glaring like an opal in the sun, between Stan's thumb and forefinger. The next moment he's swallowed it, and when Kyle see's Stan's eyes again, he knows what they hold, and feels an absurd sense of calm at which he can only smile.

_Hate _

* * *

Stan's appetite hasn't floundered. He's torn, bitten, chewed, gnawed and slurped his way through three courses, and now he's siphoning melted ice cream and a wilted whipped cream wisp onto his bare plate so he can spoon it into his mouth like a thick, sweet soup.

"So, Kyle, how's work going?" Sharon asks him, either faking or mustering genuine interest. Kyle doesn't care.

"Oh, you know. Busy. I've got this case right now, that everyone's flipping out over." He takes a drink of water. "A chipmaker has come up with a more efficient processor. 3D architecture, and it'll put them years ahead of competition, but they've received a contention from a rival, someone who came up with some idea a few months before on paper, so we're digging into all the nitty gritty details of it, trying to make sure they come out on top."

He finishes with a smile. Sharon nods and returns the gesture, weakly. Randy orders another drink. Stan's sucking his spoon.

"And Stan, it's been so long since we've talked, sweetie. How's your job going?"

"Great," he says uselessly, lifting his plate so he can lick off what he couldn't gather with his spoon.

"That's wonderful." Another smile and Kyle thinks he should take a page out of Randy's 'to hell with it' guide to social situations. Someone clears their throat, and Kyle looks over to see a waiter standing near Stan.

"Uh, sir, would you like another dessert?"

"Nope." Stan shakes his head, then returns to what Kyle now considers unwanted amorous advances on the plate.

Now the waiter looks uncomfortable, as though trying to decide if the display is offensive to the other guests.

"I'll have some wine," Kyle announces, nearly shouting, drawing the attention of the adjacent table. He quickly grabs the wine list and begins scanning it, brow furrowing in incredulity as he realizes he's just volunteered to spend twenty dollars on a glass of wine.

"This one," he says half-heatedly, pointing at the cheapest red he can find.

The waiter nods and leaves brusquely, casting one last look at Stan.

Kyle sinks lower into his seat, staring at the ceiling. When Stan's parents had called three days ago and said they were coming into town, Stan had immediately used their arrival as an excuse to make reservations at the best seafood restaurant he could find. And he insisted, he'd pay for everything. Cash. Kyle had just stood there and nodded.

There's a thud, and Kyle looks to see Stan rising from his chair, a smile on his face, plate hanging vertically between his fingers.

"Whoops," he says with clumsy innocence.

Kyle scrunches his eyes shut and shakes his head, muttering. "Oh my god, Stan." He doesn't look at Stan as he leaves for the bathroom.

"Kyle." Sharon is moving closer to him, moving into Stan's vacant chair. She places her hand near his, and Kyle's eyes briefly dart around the room.

"How is Stan? He...he really doesn't talk to us at all. I mean, is he doing well?" She sounds so lost, almost on the point of pining, that Kyle doesn't know whether to lie or brutally tell her what he thinks.

"He hasn't tried to off himself or anything, has he?" Randy breaks in the with the poise and delicacy of a drunken elephant.

"Randy!" Sharon sounds more fearful than angry.

"No." Kyle shakes his head. "No, nothing like that. He's just anxious." He doesn't tell them that a year ago Stan had cut himself while shaving with a straight edge, the gash deep and precariously close to his carotid artery, that Kyle had brushed off a meeting with a client and driven him to the hospital, that he'd held Stan's hand so tightly during the entirety of their visit that by the end Kyle's fingers had imprinted Stan's skin, white and red and deep. And the next day Stan had flown to Japan to interview some author that Kyle had never heard of, leaving him with a note that said 'Sorry, meant to tell you. Things got in the way. Really excited about this interview. Bring you back something nice. Love, Stan.' Kyle still has that note, tucked away as a bookmark in the hardbound and signed collection of stories that Stan brought back for him.

"Things have been a little rough around the edges, but otherwise it's good." Kyle nods. He's been doing that a lot lately.

Sharon looks momentarily placated. She's old, Kyle realizes, as old as his own mother and just as puzzled and frustrated by the fact that her son has built up a separate life for himself, over a thousand miles away.

Kyle's wine arrives and he takes a large gulp. Maybe it was worth the price of a meal at a normal restaurant.

"He's a Buddhist now." Randy states it plainly, like he's commenting on the weather.

Kyle frowns and notices Randy looking off to the side, as if expecting Stan to be eavesdropping on their conversation.

"What?" He asks just as plainly.

Sharon thankfully takes up the conversation. "When we called Stan a few months ago, to remind him about Ash Wednesday, he told us that he didn't need to go to church that day...because he wasn't following any scriptures anymore." She finishes awkwardly.

"Oh." Kyle takes another drink. "Oh." And he's racing, trying to remember bits and pieces of the one course on eastern thought he'd taken in college, in a valiant but failed frontal assault on the obscurity that Stan had decided to entrench himself in at the time.

"Yeah, Zen Buddhism. It doesn't have any scriptures; it's just a collection of teachings passed from teacher to student." Kyle prays, to Buddha or whoever will listen, that the Marshes won't ask who exactly pulled their son aside and decided to instruct him in the ways of Zen Buddhism. "He converted about a year ago. I didn't know he'd completely rejected participating in Catholic affairs." His glass is almost empty by now.

"Yeah, that's what he told us." Randy looks at his own glass unhappily.

"It's just," Sharon continues delicately, "we're not really sure how to talk to him. About anything." She's pleading again, and Kyle wants to spread his hands and shake his head.

"I have that problem too." He's spinning his glass on its side, watching the remaining wine trace out a watery curtain against the side. "Stan's just really dedicated to his work. Almost...too dedicated. I guess he just doesn't know how to talk to either of you about it." And the wine is gone.

Randy makes a noise, something like a laugh got caught in a blender. "Yeah, that wouldn't have happened if he'd studied something normal."

Sharon rebukes him; Kyle says nothing. He looks towards the bathrooms, where Stan's already spent the last fifteen minutes. Either he's been struck by explosive diarrhea, or...Kyle's mouth goes dry and his pulse quickens.

"I'm going to go see what's keeping Stan." Kyle is gone from the table before he can see or hear the Marshs' reactions. His pace quickens in proportion to his distance from the bathroom, and he's almost running by the time he pushes the door open.

The faucet is running. Stan is leaning on the black marble of the bathroom countertop, his arms spread out on either side of him, palms open. He turns, sees Kyle, smiles, and gives a two fingered salute.

"Yo." Then he's back to staring at the countertop.

"Stan..."

"I was wondering how long before you came barreling in here." He pauses. "You can check my wrists and neck. They're fine."

Kyle winces at the remark. "That's not why I came in here."

"Oh? Well, I guess that's understandable. I didn't wanna sit there listening to that train wreck of a conversation either." He gestures to a padded bench against the wall. "Have a seat. We can have our own conversation in here. It'll be more fun."

Kyle doesn't move. Normally, Stan in a suit is all it would take to make Kyle's evening. Stan in a fitted suit the same color as his eyebrows, with a tie to match is eyes, and he'd be back to terrible, dirty thoughts. Now, he thinks of grey skies and cold earth.

"So, you're a Zen Buddhist now?" It's a start.

Stan turns his head and looks pensive. "Oh." He frowns. "_Oh. _Christ, they asked you about that?"

"Christ, Stan? And yeah, they did."

Stan slides his hands together and stands up straight. He 'hrms' and looks at the ceiling. "That's bullshit, anyway."

"The religion, or you telling people that you're part of it?"

Stan laughs.

The water is still running, and Kyle wants it to keep going. He steps forward, and Stan starts for the door. Kyle places a hand on his shoulder.

"Hm? Something wrong?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

Stan rolls his eyes. "Really, Kyle? In a bathroom, in a restaurant? OK. Why not?" He backs up. "So?"

"This is a really shitty night."

"No kidding. That's why I came in here."

"It's_ because_ you came in here."

"And you think that crap out there wasn't a contributing factor?"

"Yeah, because you did a grand total of none of the talking."

"What is there to talk about? Besides, 'oh, Stan's about to strip naked and start dancing on the table, except, wait, Stan's never done that, so maybe we're just starved for conversation.'"

Stan's voice is quiet, brutal, his face mocking, and a part of Kyle wants to berate him, another wants to act out the inexplicable arousal Stan's current outfit normally endows him with.

"I just spent the last fifteen minutes lying to your parents."

"What about?" He sounds anything but interested.

"Everything. That I'm fine, that you're fine, that everything's _fine."_

Now Stan is curious, almost confused. "Aren't you fine?" There's genuine concern, concern, and Kyle is so helpless in the face of it that he nearly slides his hand into Stan's and walks out the door with him.

He nods, clearing his throat. "Yes. I am."

"And did it ever occur to you that I might be fine?"

Kyle is taken short, by the tone and the words. He shakes his head. "No. No, you're not, Stan. Staying up all night for three nights in a row, the poetry..."

"This is about New York, Kyle, so cut the crap. Four years ago. Something you have no right to hold against me anymore."

"One year ago. How about that?"

"An accident."

"No it wasn't."

"Prove it."

They stare at each other. Stan is at his full height, hands clenched, face calm, except his eyes; they're hawkish, alert. Kyle wants a picture. A picture of the side of Stan's neck, of the torn skin, the blood, the angle of the cut.

His voice wavers as he speaks. He makes it softer. "Stan, when I took you to the hospital, and..."

"No." Stan cuts him off with a growl. "You're not doing this to me, Kyle." His eyes are shining. He's pointing with his fore and middle finger. "Just remember how I acted when we went to the hospital after the art gallery. Remember that, then talk to me." He walks past Kyle, who's peripheral vision isn't quite working well enough to see him as more than a dull blip.

"The poems," he says, barely articulating his words.

Stan sighs. "What about them?"

Stan's hand guiding his over the paper. Stan's warm breath against his neck. Stan's soft face against his temple. It's love. All of it.

"What were they about?"

There's a lull. "Fake death poems."

Kyle knows what the words mean, but he has no idea what they represent, in this context, in that order, coming out of Stan's mouth. He can't say anything.

And Stan's tired voice. "You think it's weird, Kyle. I know. You can tell me. I won't mind."

"Why are they fake?" He tries, on last time.

"Because I wasn't anywhere near to death when I wrote them." He says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world. Then he's gone.

Kyle places his forehead against the cool wall. He's fine, he knows. Except he feels like he's just been punched in the gut.

* * *

Kyle acknowledges, as he wishes Stan good luck with an interview he's conducting at UChicago , that he should never have let himself leave South Park. There was a mad impetus to get out, to do everything short of burning his childhood home down, in order to make sure that he wouldn't be drawn back. He can safely say, after having lived hundreds of miles away, first for college, now for work, that South Park exuded a subtle, yet constant stabilizing influence. Regardless of what happened, things always managed to find their way back to normal. Stan said it was like the Odyssey; no matter how much shit Odysseus faced on his way home, no matter how many people died, or how absurd things became, in the end, everything adhered to the status quo.

_And if I were there now, would things be back to normal? Would Stan be just like he was at the beginning of high school? _Somehow, Kyle continued to entertain the notion that yes, he would be.

He tries watching TV, first the news, then the weather, then HBO, but in the end, he's just wearing out the remote. He looks over at the statue, still sitting on the rug. Stan hadn't been happy about seeing it there; he'd been less happy when Kyle had told him that he'd called Cartman to help him.

"Cartman? Really Kyle? You could have asked me, if it was really bothering you that much..."

And Kyle hadn't known what to say. He couldn't make himself outraged, or defensive, or even ashamed. He felt sorry all over again, that he'd upset whatever minute balance Stan might have manged to achieve since the incident. The incident. The incident at the art gallery, the incident at the hospital, the incident with Cartman, and in New York, and with the books, and the pills and the deposition, and the...

He shuts the TV off. There's a rustling; Stan hung the calligraphy scrolls he'd written on a few days ago, and they sway in the lazy summer breeze. Stan says they remind him of paper lanterns, when the sun hits them. There's apparently a show, a 'magic lantern' performance at the university in a few weeks that Stan's covering and critiquing. _Gentou, _he'd commented happily, mostly to himself, while he'd been slicing a fresh salmon cleanly down the middle. Stan didn't speak Japanese in front of Kyle often, but when he did, he sounded older, clearer, surer.

Kyle walks to their bedroom. They have a large closet; by mutual agreement, that was imperative. On the left side, beneath jackets and slacks and carefully pressed shirts, were Stan's calligraphy supplies, his paper, and a box labeled 'Highlights.' Kyle takes the box and puts it on the bed. He removes the lid like it's made of glass. Inside, he sees a handful of disks in colorful jewel cases, labeled by date.

"June...November...February...May." He breaths and grabs the disk. His hands are sweaty.

Kyle sits back as the disk plays, resting his back against the cushion. The screen is blue, then taken up by a title that Kyle can't read. He doesn't care what the questions are, who's being interviewed. Then Stan appears on screen. He's wearing a suit, a tie. A white shirt, the collar coming far up his neck, just barely blends with the gauze and bandage that creep a few centimeters shy of his jawbone.

Kyle breaths out. He smiles, then licks his lips, then wrings his hands, then drums his fingers against his thigh.

Stan is speaking. Kyle stares. His voice is deep. It's a rich baritone; where his English voice might rise almost to an awkward crack of pubescent uncertainty when he's surprised, his Japanese flows so smoothly he might as well be singing, as far as Kyle is concerned.

The author appears. He's an older man, well into his sixties, wearing round glasses with thick black frames. He has smooth, white hair. Kyle looks at him just long enough to commit his face to memory for the duration of the interview.

Stan. Stan contains himself purely through professional propriety. His fingers are drumming against the book Kyle suddenly realizes he's holding. Kyle's pulse quickens. Stan gestures for the man to sit. He inclines his head, clears his throat and utters what Kyle knows must be a greeting, and a thank you. The two men exchange more brief words, Stan crosses one leg over the other, and the interview commences in earnest. Stan laughs. He smiles. He gestures, slowly, then rapidly, then over enthusiastically. Happily. He holds up the book for the camera to focus on, and Kyle is simultaneously elated, then disquieted by the straining in his chest. The interview continues. Kyle can't understand a word. He watches it to completion.

When the screen goes blue again, Kyle wipes his eyes. He's leaning forward, arching like his mother always told him not to. It's as though his mind and mouth have been vacated of thoughts and words. He stands as though in a daze, and he walks to the table. He arranges some of the magazines and mail, then turns and sees the statue. His foot throbs as if in reflex. Stan carrying him into the wheelchair, his bloody toe in the air. He bows his head, covers his eyes and laughs at the images.

"OK."

He walks to the statue, bends down, grabs the edge of the rug with both hands, and starts dragging it towards the door.

* * *

Stan returns about half an hour later, his eyebrows rising farther the closer he comes to the apartment entrance.

"Kyle? Are you all right? What's going on?"

Kyle greets him with a kiss, sloppy, abrupt. Stan's lips taste like beer.

"Whoa, OK, not that I mind, but...you don't usually kiss me outside the door."

"Stan. Why the hell are you still with me?"

Stan stalls in all his motions. "What...where is this coming from?"

"Just answer me Stan. Please. Like, as seriously and simply as you can." Kyle sits back down, next to the statue.

"Well." Stan laughs, curtly. "Because you're Kyle." He looks off. Nods. "Yeah. That's it. As simple as possible."

Kyle's laughing on the end of the words, jumping up and hugging Stan. "I've realized something," he speaks into Stan's shoulder.

"What's that?" Stan sounds uncertain, like he's leaning dangerously close to the edge of contentment.

"You're Stan. You're Stan, and that's it." He's shaking, with laughter or tears or fear or... He removes himself from Stan's embrace. "I'm so fucking sorry."

Stan nods seriously. "You've said the most difficult words in any language."

"Oh? Is that your scholarly opinion?"

"Definitely."

"We're taking this thing to Wendy's. It's...it's a piece of shit, but I can stand it, but it's going to Wendy's. Today. Now."

"Wendy isn't back yet."

Kyle waves his hand. "Come on. Do you really want this in the apartment for another week?"

Stan is helping him load the statue into the car, and twenty minutes later, they're outside Wendy's apartment complex.

"I should have thought this through," Kyle mutters as they stand panting outside the locked door, six steps up.

Stan shrugs and slides his finger down every call button on the bank. The door buzzes and he immediately grabs the handle and swings it open, Kyle laughing as he does so. They move the piece inside, off to the side and out of the way of the mailboxes; they complete the delivery by taping a note, written in Stan's neat hand. 'To: Wendy. Love, Stan and Kyle.'

Stan is laughing as they descend the stairs. "She's going to kill us."

Kyle looks at the building dismissively. "Let her try."

"Kyle."

"Hm?"

Stan kisses him. It's soft and tender and needy and everything that Kyle has always wanted to have and return.

"Wendy might have good taste in art after all."


End file.
